Marshall McLuhan: Quotes about the world

Marshall McLuhan was Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a communications theorist. Explore interesting quotes on world.
Marshall McLuhan: 832 quotes16 likes

“There is no connection between the elements in an electric world, which is equivalent to being surrounded by the human unconscious.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 260

“Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentlemen's library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the living to the workman's breakfast table.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 15

“The discarnate TV user lives in a world between fantasy and dream, and is in a typically hypnotic state, which is the ultimate form and level of participation.”

Marshall McLuhan

"A Last Look at the Tube." New York Magazine, 17 March 1978, p. 45-48
1970s

“The fall or scrapping of a cultural world puts us all into the same archetypal cesspool, engendering nostalgia for earlier conditions.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 103

“The media have substituted themselves for the older world.”

Marshall McLuhan

"Education, Language, and Media". Cycle 7, 1973, p. 232
1970s

“World War I a railway war of centralization and encirclement. World War II a radio war of decentralization concluded by the Bomb. World War III a TV guerrilla war with no divisions between civil and military fronts.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 152

“One touch of nature makes the whole world tin.”

Marshall McLuhan

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970), p.66

“While people are engaged in creating a totally different world, they always form vivid images of the preceding world.”

Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 21

“We are numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture. (p. 16)”

Marshall McLuhan

1960s, Understanding Media (1964)

“The coverage is the war. If there were no coverage, there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the mediamen around the world are actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.”

Marshall McLuhan

1970s, Forces interview (1973)

“Literacy, in translating man out of the closed world of tribal depth and resonance, gave man an eye for an ear and ushered him into a visual open world of specialized and divided consciousness.”

Marshall McLuhan

1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

“Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.”

Marshall McLuhan

Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
1950s